True fixed/cell phone convergence seen years off

By Niclas Mika

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - It will be years before the much-hyped blending of services that run seamlessly over both fixed and cell phone networks will allow consumers to communicate freely on any device, industry executives say.

Operators have trouble finding customers for combined deals offering fixed and mobile services, which are complicated to set up and lack choice in handsets, industry executives said at a convergence conference in Amsterdam that runs until Thursday.

Germany's Deutsche Telekom this year scrapped its "T-One" product that allowed consumers to use a single device for cheap calls over a fixed line at home and its mobile network when away. It attracted only a few thousand users.

Neuf Cegetel CEO Jacques Veyrat told Reuters earlier this month that the number of customers of the French, predominantly fixed-line company's so-called fixed-mobile offer was only a small part of its 150,000 cell phone clients.

Many operators that offer such a service see it simply as a way of binding customers closer to their fixed-line networks, and are reluctant to offer additional services that span other devices and networks.

"We're offering nothing more than cost reduction at this time," Sebastiao Boanerges Ribeiro of Brasil Telecom told the conference.

True convergence looks different, said Michel van Veen, business development manager with Cable & Wireless.

"My son uses games, instant messaging and video telephony. He doesn't really care about the difference between a PC, a laptop or a mobile device. He wants to use services and he doesn't understand why one will work on one device, and one on another," Van Veen said.